Island Shore

Horo, thanks again!! I am very happy you find the vegetation acceptable. I know how specific you are with your own trees. I have tried to use lights to overcome the lack of translucency. Cleverly observed again, this time of day makes it a good bit easier. At lower sun angles I think it probably gets harder. But I think that if this ever becomes public then I would need to stick to a non translucent material light dependent rig for those who wanted faster renders. Some amount can be faked with the new lights in Bryce 7, so I am hopeful. Thanks again!

The richness of the vegetation is what makes this render look beautiful. It is again the foreground which is a bit weak. The sun is left and quite high. With this light, you can get away without leave translucency quite well.

Thanks C-ram and David. I was unable to find a satisfactory answer for the wetness along the sand. I did labor a bit on the sea foam, but without the wet along the shore it does not come together as it should. I am looking to avoid anything which raises the memory usage. For the ground material, I am already using an altitude sensitive material. I use it to draw the sand and the grass and the rocks. I then used a second map for the darkening along the shoreline. Basically, I ran out of channels for the specular and reflection tricks I was employing. I could go into more detail but I will hold off unless David wants me to be more specific. Trees are set with opaque leaves, no translucency here. Adding that in would have made a huge difference in the final render but also led to longer render times. I am thinking of making a sellable product out of this project, so I am keeping the effects minimal as to not overwhelm the userbase. We shall see.

If I were looking for trouble I'd comment again on the sand and the water, particularly the waters edge, which as we know is a very difficult subject. Vegitation and scene complexity are again, amazing, the light is very good but if I were hypercritical, at this distance the leaves look a bit "heavy" and dense - you have spoiled us with your Zen image. Still, no hesitation for top marks. 5/5

For me this picture is a marvel. All these plants are really hyper-realistic. Magnificent echosysteme. I however found it more appropriate if you've work some little sea waves leaving traces on the sand. It would have brought more to the set of the whole image character. But no doubt a 5/5.